Helping Guests With Preserving Travel Memories
A life well-lived is a life well-traveled. Traveling opens you up to the world and allows you to revel in new, unexpected experiences that have the potential to shape your life. The last point is what Modern Innkeeper wants you to focus on. Preserving travel memories from those experiences enables guests to cherish their time spent at your vacation rental, and they also become more inclined to return in order to create new ones! Continue reading to learn five thoughtful ways you can help guests savor in their memories made during vacation.
Postcards
Receiving postcards from friends or family members during their travels is a terrific way to get an idea of how they are spending their time away. Postcards are also pleasant to come home to after a memorable vacation of your own. Guests who want to recall a specific instance of their vacation, like how they spent the day with a local guide you helped them hire, may grab a postcard and mail it home to have upon their return. This way they are able to ingrain the memories while they are still fresh. Assist them by providing them with postcards from notable local sights you recommended they visit. You can leave them next to the personal letter in your makeshift lobby so they are visible. If you have any insight as to where they should get postcards from, share that information!
Travel Scrapbook
Reminiscing with your family by looking through old photo albums is a timeless way to celebrate all the years spent together. A travel scrapbook serves a similar purpose. Travelers who take the time to create one can always refer back to it when they want to relive a particular trip. Sometimes the hardest part with endeavors like this is simply getting started, but supplying your guests with a travel scrapbook kit, like this one, is a motivator!
Maps
Scratch off maps are popular for frequent travelers because they identify previously visited destinations, but since your focus is ensuring guests remember their trip at your vacation rental, impart on them something more tailored to that specific trip. One any host can provide, no matter the destination, is a map of the specific town or city the rental is in. That way guests can always refer back to it when they are feeling nostalgic. If your area is full of trails, find a map of them to leave for your guests, and make it clear it is theirs to keep!
Journaling
Similar to a travel book, one of the most difficult parts of maintaining a journal is starting. Encourage guests to journal by giving them a notebook to jot down their thoughts throughout their trip. Journaling is therapeutic and a terrific way to express certain emotions in the moment. When guests read it some time later, they are able to recollect exactly what they were feeling or thinking in specific moments. It will remind them of how much they treasured the experience you helped them have. Hopefully enough to make them realize they need to visit again!
Souvenirs
Collecting souvenirs might be obvious, but hosts can still help their guests ensure they choose special ones! What you want to help guests avoid is buying souvenirs that are replaceable to the point they eventually lose them or forget where they found them. Recommend to guests the best places in your rental’s area to shop for souvenirs. This is a prime opportunity to partner up with and promote local businesses you know sell quality keepsakes that represent the area.
Trips End, But Their Memories Last Forever
Just because a trip ends does not mean it is over. As the host, you have a great deal of influence on whether or not guests preserve the memories they made while staying at your vacation rental.